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An essay, according to Oxford Dictionary, is a short piece of writing on a particular subject. In a way, everyone can write an Essay. The only thing they need to do is contemplating and pouring their thought on a piece of writing.

Regardless of the formal essay structure, you are required to make a piece of writing in response to the article below:

I attended the CRA’s Snowbird Conference last month. The most interesting talk was a keynote from Genevieve Bell (also see here) who is an anthropologist who works at Intel Research. One of her messages was that while we tend to think that technology changes culture, it’s more often the other way around. Cultures are very robust and change slowly. It’s typical for a new technology to be adapted within a culture and used to support existing patterns of behavior.

For example, she said that mobile phone manufacturers have developed popular phones for Muslim users that support their religious practices by (1) reminding them when it is time to pray, (2) orienting them towards Mecca and (3) disabling incoming calls for 20 minutes. She gave many other examples from Africa and Asia that showed how new technology is being used in ways that fit into the existing cultures.

I found the message reassuring. Itâ€™s easy to get worked up into a state of anxiety about what our modern world is doing to our societies. Human cultures are apparently more resilient than we naively assume.

So, what do you think about the topic? Write down your idea in response of the article above within 150-200 words and post it on comment space below. Don’t forget to attach your full name and student number. The deadline is tomorrow, Friday, 4 pm. The post will be considered as one meeting attendance. Thank you.

The question above indicates that the person wants to know whether a particular action happened in an unspesific time before now. The kind of tense which is used in that question is Present Perfect. Pay attention to the examples below.

I have fixed your laptop. (S+has/have+Past participle)

I haven’t checked your e-mail. (S+has/have+not+ Past Participle)

Have you heard about Steve Jobbs? (Has/have + S + Past Participle)

Note that in Present Perfect Tense, specific time expression, such as ‘yesterday’, ‘last night’, cannot be used. Only unspesific time expression can be used in Present Perfect Tense, like ‘ever’, ‘never’, ‘once’, ‘many times’, ‘several times’, ‘before’, ‘so far’, ‘already’, ‘yet’, etc.

When somebody says, “I have done my project,” it indicates that the person did the activity in unspesific time in the past. The person doesn’t emphasize the time when he/she did the activity, but more about finishing the activity.

A. Now, to check your understanding, work on this exercise. Re-write the sentence into the correct form of Present Perfect Tense

Example: Mary (not/have) any chance to show her project to her friends.

Answer: Mary hasn’t had any chance to show her project to her friends.

1. I (never/use) any PC tablet before.

2. We (not/finish) our plan yet.

3. Rudy (download) 400 movies so far.

4. Axel and Dion (ever/sell) their software to some big companies.

5. (you/ever/have) some trouble with your computer?

6. Some people (never/try) to communicate using the internet.

7. (you/ever/publish) some articles using Blogs?

8. Unfortunately, the investigators (not/find) any clue on who hacked the government official website.

9. (your mother/ever/visit) your website?

10. Where (you/be) all this time?

Now that you already understand about Present Perfect Tense, let’s try to compare between Present Perfect and Simple Past. Just to refresh your memory, Simple Past is a tense used in expressing an activity happened in a spesific time in the past.

In other way, Simple Past can use spesific time expression, while Present Perfect cannot.

I have fixed your laptop. (Present Perfect)

I fixed your laptop last night (Simple Past)

Now do the exercise below to check your understanding

B. Rewrite the sentence using Present Perfect OR Simple Past

1. I (create) 25 video games already.

2. She (watch) the movie 23 times.

3. (you/go) to the match last night?

4. I (ever/try) to play Pool on Facebook.

5. The police (manage) to arrest the cyber criminal last wednesday.

6. Have (you/be) to Silicon Valley?

The exercise is to be submitted on a piece of paper during the meeting today, May 30th 2013. The assignment submitted will be considered as one meeting attendance.

For decades, reading has become one of the most popular leisure time activities. Somehow, there are times when a reader are required to comprehend a reading material in a very short amount of time. Therefore, the quick-reading techniques should be applied in that case.

The quick-reading techniques that a reader can apply in such condition are Skimming and Scanning. The technique will help the reader to reach the goal of reading, i.e understanding the main idea and specific information of the text.

Skimming is a method of rapidly moving the eyes over the text in order to get only the main idea of the text and the general idea related to the context of the reading material.

The steps:

1.Read the title (if there’s any)

2.Read the introduction of the paragraph

3.Read the first paragraph completely

4.If there are some subheadings read and relate each subheadings

5.Read the first sentence of the remaining paragraphs

6.Pay more attention to the text and look for some clues that answer WH-questions and find some unusual words

7.Read the final paragraph completely.

Scanning is a method of rapidly covers the whole material in order to locate specific pieces of information.

The steps:

1.While reading, keep in your mind all the time about the specific information you’re trying to find

2.When you find some words related to the information you’re trying to find then take some time to read carefully the whole sentence and check whether it’s the appropriate piece.

source: Anne Arundel Community College

sdTo get more understanding on the quick-reading techniques, do the exercise below. Read and answer the questions by following the steps explained previously

Read the following text:

TThe Finns may be more diligent about preparing their kids for the future than most nationalities. But they do seem to do it with unusual degree of conviction about what´ s going to be important-one big reason they buy their teenagers mobile phones and foot the monthly bills about 40 dollars. A study by the Information Society Research Center at the University of Tampere (sponsored by wireless operator Sonera, Nokia and Tekes, the government agency that promotes technology and doles out development capital) concludes that parents see a mobile phone as a “ key to the information society”.

Keeping tabs on the little rascals may be just a supplementary benefit-and maybe not even a benefit, if Heidi, a 15 year-old in Leena Nordman` s English class, is to be believed. “My mom` s always calling me, “ she says, rolling her eyes.

When Norman a Physical Education teacher tells her students that they` re allowed to get their phones out one spring day, they all proudly do so. Some of the boys immediately start playing games built into the small, colorful devices. And Heidi and a few kids are eager to tell other people about their obsession. First of all, the thing is not a phone.

It’s a kannykka ( a little hand), a luuri ( a transmitter) and sometimes a kapula ( a stick).

Or just a Nokia.

Most of these fairly well-off kids have computers at home, and enjoy visiting chat houses. But like other Finnish teens, they really get a charge of the relatively cumbersome e-mail capability available on their phones. There´ s a 161 character limit, the inconvenience of a telephone keypad- and the thrill of gossiping, flirting or just bombarding each other with smiley faces, all for less than the cost of a voice call.

Eija-liisa Kasesniemi, who ran the Information Society Research Center study, says the kids have their own vocabulary here, too. Is mobile-text-messaging just for kids? Phone

Company Radiolinja might have thought so when it debuted a service shortly before Christmas one year.

But when half of Helsinki realized that last-minute electronic cards are more convenient than paper ones-and crashed the network-Radiolinja understood that it had something bigger on its hands.

Source: Newsweek, May 1999

I- True or false ? Support your answer by quoting from the text.

a) Finnish parents consider that a mobile phone is a superfluous object.

b) They don` t mind paying the extra costs these objects represent.

c) Sometimes teachers allow students to use their mobiles in class.

d) Teenagers never use their devices for sending e-messages

e) This kind of communication is causing a transformation of the normal language of communication

II- Explain.

a) whyFinnish parents consider it is important for their children to have a mobile phone.

b) why sometimes teenager would rather not have them.

c) what students do when they are allowed to use their mobiles in class.

d) what they use their e-mail for.

e) what kind of language they use when they send their messages through e-mail.

Do the exercise on a piece of paper. The worksheets are to be submitted on Thursday, May 16th 2013 in our Bahasa Inggris class. The work submitted is counted as 1 meeting.

After watching a Beauty Pageant in TV at a glance, I found out that I need to write something about this. This whole thing about the concept of beauty really bothers my mind.

Frankly speaking, I don’t really fancy that kind of competition. A kind of competition where all girls should line up, be heavily made up and be forced to smile and put their hands on their waist for hours while all people are judging, cheering and booing them at the same time.

I know on and on again they stated that it’s not only about beauty which is considered, but also the inner beauty; referring to intelligence and behavior. But, somehow we have to admit that those contestants have fair skin, thick hair, good body posture, and excellent arrangement of teeth.

The Beauty Pageant is always supported by a company which sells lipstick and stuff. Women should be aware that it was made to shape the society’s concept of beauty. Being intelligent and well-behaved are not enough, you have to be what-they-call-as-beautiful, just like the winner of the beauty pageant. When you’re beautiful but you’re not intelligent, you’re still forgiven, moreover you still can survive. But when you’re not intelligent let alone you’re not considered to be beautiful, you won’t be able to compete in this modern era. That’s what I think is implied from the Beauty Pageant.

I’m not saying that women should stop wearing make-ups. Fyi, I usually wear lipstick and eyeliner. I’m just saying that Beauty is not a thing which is appropriate to be scored in a competition. Women should define their own beauty. They shouldn’t let others define beauty for them. We can have different concepts of beauty. But, what I think is that all women in the world were born beautiful. God only creates the best, there’s no typo or rejected products.

Beauty is in the soul and it’s created by The Almighty. The artificial beauty is made by human, and it gives women nothing more than a temporary satisfaction.

I know I have betrayed my students by neglecting my own blog for several months, so here I am, trying to get back on the line, (thanks for “Freedom Writers” movie and “The Freedom Writers Diary” as triggers).

I started writing my diary (again) last night, and I thought it will be nice to share it here; and here’s what i wrote…

Dear Diary,

To be honest, I’ve written several diaries before this one, but I haven’t succeeded to maintain it well. What I can say about myself is that I’m a good starter but I’m pretty bad at being committed to any particular thing. Take this “Diary writing” activity as an example. The first time I wrote my own diary was when I was in elementary school. I can recall the shape, the color and even the smell of the book. My first diary was a gift for my, if I’m not mistaken, 8th birthday. So, I was in the third grade of Elementary school at that time when I started my own diary. The diary was pretty nice, and classic. It has musical theme on the cover. It’s not so clear any more, but I can still remember that it wasn’t thick, quite thin, and light. The color was a combination of light brown and yellow. My favorite was that it had a lock on it, complete with two small keys, one for a spare. I don’t really remember exactly what I wrote there. But, I can remember that I wrote several poems. Probably it was for my mother, or my crush back on elementary school. After that, I had several diaries, and I never ran out of paper at that moment, since I get bored so easily in writing diaries, so most of the time I just completely forgot where I put my diary.

But somehow, sometimes that strong will to write suddenly occur. Anything can be a trigger, any experience, like a long talk or a discussion with someone, a lousy TV program, a moving story, a disgusting movie, or maybe an inspiring book. Just like today, the moment when I started to write my diary again.

I read two pages of The Freedom Writers Diary. Well, it ain’t precisely two pages of the real “Freedom Writers Diary” since I have just reached the foreword which is written by Zlata Filipovic (who is mentioned in this book as the author of “Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo”). And, I hate to agree with certain critics who said that the “Freedom Writers” movie is not as well pictured, not as moving as the book. Well, I guess it happens all the time right? And somehow, it took me only two pages to decide that I have to pass this book to someone else immediately, I certainly have to share this reading experience with my students. The idea of this book is strong and contagious. Can you imagine two pages of foreword can light the fire on my dark study room, encourage me to start writing my dairy again?

Ms. Ika (one of my colleague in the University, and of my best friend) told me that this book is a page turner. You just can’t stop reading. It gives you fuel to pump up the class. It might sound like exaggerating, and might be overwhelming at the same time, but somehow, it does. I wonder if someday I can write this kind of book, a kind of book that will change people’s world. A book that can break the system. But I can see already that this book had done something to Ms. Ika. Yesterday when we had a lunch with Courtney, … it was a simple lunch and a very long conversation in addition, she proposed me to have a kind of English Club that Courtney had suggested before, to give students room to explore and improve their capability as well as their critical mind. I agreed at once. Frankly, I can’t hardly wait to start, but I just don’t have a clue what kind of program that we are going to have in this English Club. But I’ll figure it out soon.

By the way, I found a very interesting, intimidating and as well inspiring quote from Zlata Filipovic’s foreword on “The Freedom Writers Diary”,

It would be easy to become a victim of our circumstances and continue feeling sad, scared or angry; or instead, we could choose to deal with injustice humanely and break the chains of negative thoughts and energies, and not let ourselves sink into it. Writing about the things that happen to us allows us to look objectively at what’s going on around us and turn a negative experience into something positive and useful. This process requires a lot of work, effort and greatness, but it is possible,…

Some simple words tied together and turn into a very moving quote. So it’s true that we don’t have to use sophisticated language all the time to talk about a very crucial issue. We just have to tell it with such a pure heart. In pure heart comes wisdom.

And I completely agree to Zlata. It’s difficult but it’s possible. Well, then I have an excuse of my being lazy to write my diary. *wink* lol

First of all I’d like to apologize to all of my writing class students, for not keeping my promise checking their blogs on wednesday,.I was kinda occupied at that time. I hope you all guys can understand *wink*

So.. I have read all the blogs, but unfortunately I cannot give comments on some blogs, and don’t ask me why, cuz frankly speaking, I have no idea, maybe you can ask Wen about it. So for those whose blog hasn’t been commented yet by me, please, do something with your blog okay?

Well… it’s been a long holiday, but a dull one for me. I don’t really like holiday when it comes with no activity. Boring. No memorable stories. Just want to get rid of it soon.

So, can’t hardly wait to get back to campus and meet you again guys! hahaha… (which i believe that you don’t agree with me, I know how students love holidays.. especially a long one ^_^)

Enjoy the rest of your holiday, cuz your next assignments are on the way…. fufufufufu… ^_^